A week with no news....?

Yes, I am sorry, truely I am. But not a massive amount of anything terribly interesting to report, to be honest! However, a brief summary is as follows;

Côté Rénovations;
We decided that access to the gear behind the bed up in the attic was problematic. We decided that the medium term plan would be to build some kind of shelving unit on the other side of the room on which climbing gear, skiing gear, mountaineering gear, boots etc could be stored and better organised, which would provide easier and quicker access. But before that could happen, we had to scrim the plasterboards on that side of the room and get a lick of paint on them too. Oh joy! My scrimming and gap filling attempts were largely successful but Andy's battle with the French skimming plaster was the source of much frustration and fury (not for the first time and no doubt not for the last!). I was obliged to follow on, smoothing over the grittiness (is that a word?!) and gouges with ordinary filler. A quick light sand down and a 1/4 of the attic ceiling will be ready for painting. Only three more sections to do!! Hurrah! But will we get it completed before mum and Jamie come out at Christmas......? Watch that space.

Andy has also managed to get the stairwell side of the new section of the attic stud wall plasterboarded and that has made a big improvement to the appearance of the way up to the attic.

Côté exercis;
Wednesday, I needed to stretch my legs, so took the pooch for a quick blast up Estibat (Col de Port to the top, 340m of ascent over 1.5km in 30 mins) then a quick descent down to the left and onto the next ridgeline, where lovely easy running on cow tracks led me eventually back down and round the hillside to the path that I had taken up to Estibat. It was a pleasant hour out in good, still but chilly conditions. Everything seemed to be working well and I felt that I could have done the whole thing again.

Today is Sunday and the day dawned dull, cold and very overcast.... not a day to 'go high' we thought so instead, as a bit of a leg stretch, we did the route from Massat along the Chemin des Diligences to Biert and back (9km in total). Lovely, easy running (well, jogging!), pretty much on the level and on good terrain. The icing on the cake was a sign on the Chemin, pointing up the hillside which said 'site d'escalade, Grotte Superieure', several routes from 5a to 7b apparently! We had no idea that this climbing was on our doorstep so now we just have to get hold of the topos from somewhere and get up there :-) Bonus!

Côté méteo;
Hmm, although snow appears to be down to around 1100m and it is certainly colder than last week, no more snow is forecast, so we may not get a chance to play with our new kit in the foreseeable future after all :-( Patience, dear girl, patience!